In various types of wireless networks, a base station (BS) may poll the subscriber stations (SS) in the network to determine if they have data to transmit to the BS. If an SS is transmitting real-time data to the BS, it must be polled frequently to avoid disrupting the real-time flow of that data. However, if the SS does not thing to transmit, repeated frequent polling of that SS (as well as frequent polling her SS's in the network) can use up a lot of network bandwidth in unproductive polling. In bursty traffic environments, where a particular SS may go for long periods with to send, this unproductive polling can use up significant network bandwidth.